Ballad of the Travelling People
Through close consultation with members of the Charles Parker Archive Trust the Hereford-based community media and production charity, The Rural Media Company, has developed a project which takes as its inspiration the ‘Travelling People’. This radio programme, and the 30 hours of oral history that sits behind it, was the 8th of the ground-breaking series called the Radio Ballads produced by the pioneering BBC producer, Charles Parker. It was first broadcast on the BBC’s Home Service on 17th April 1964.
Rural Media is seeking the support of the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) to enable the project, provisionally called ‘The Ballad of the Travelling people’ to start later this year.
‘The Ballad of the Travelling People’ will be a participatory heritage project that will better connect UK Gypsy and Traveller communities with their heritage by making the Charles Parker Travelling People archive, which is held at the Library of Birmingham, more accessible to Gypsies and Travellers themselves.
The aim of the project is to also widen access and to make this remarkable body of work known within a broad range of social, academic and educational contexts. Archive extracts will then be used as inspiration to train today’s young Gypsies and Travellers in digital media and oral history skills in order to produce new oral testimony with older family members culminating in a new ‘radio ballad’ and learning resources for wider public and specialist access and appreciation.
Rural Media’s Chief Executive, Nic Millington, said “Rural Media publishes the only national magazine and online portal for Gypsies, Roma and Travellers in the UK. Teaming up with the Charles Parker Archive Trust is hugely exciting and will enable us to significantly increase interest in the remarkable work of Charles Parker.”
For further information about this project contact:
Nic Millington
CEO
The Rural Media Company
01432 344039
